Monday, February 14, 2005

The Spec doesn't read Reason.

This month, the New York City Department of Information Technology andTelecommunications will take the next step in its plan to create a completecitywide mobile wireless communications network. The department will grantcontracts to at least one company to test strategies to bring wireless radio,more commonly known as Wi-Fi, to the city.

To set up the network, the city will have to lease areas for nearly 20,000signal emitters, potentially including light poles and traffic signs. Once thesystem is installed, the city could end up turning a profit by sellingsubscriptions to users.A group of New Yorkers opposed to the new network dreadthe addition of thousands of antennae to the city.The system will likely notaffect current Columbia students, as the project will take close to ten years tocomplete.

The system will, among other things, eliminate the need for many of theleased wires that operate traffic signals in the city. The system plans to takeadvantage of Wi-Fi “mesh” technology which should fight the problem ofprojecting a signal in the urban canyons of downtown. Estimates have put thecost of the project at as much as $1 billion.

We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wirelessinternet service," the 37-year-old Democrat declared.

But some believers in sensible governance or reliable technology mighthope they can be stopped. With the rapid expansion of wireless broadbandprotocols—802.11(b) anyone? How about (g), or (n)? And what of WiMax?—it'sunclear how the city can put up a network that won't be obsolete in six months.And WiFi, despite its intriguing name, doesn't really come out of the air: Itcommunicates old-fashioned internet connections at very limited ranges...

"Some of these experiments aren't bad, and shouldn't necessarily bedismissed," says Tom Hazlett, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. "Theproblem is that city regulators keep out the real networks people are trying tobuild, by holding up rights of access."

3 comments:

Techonocrats are for the future, but only if someone is in charge of making it turn out according to plan. They greet every new idea with a "yes, but" followed by legislation, regulation, and litigation. They get very nervous at the suggesion that the future might develop spontaneously. It is, they assume, too important and too dangerous to be left to undirected evolution.

--The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress

Techonocrats are for the future, but only if someone is in charge of making it turn out according to plan. They greet every new idea with a "yes,but" followed by legislation, regulation, and litigation. They get very nervous at the suggesion that the future might develop spontaneously. It is, they assume, too important and too dangerous to be left to undirected evolution.

--The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Pro

Virginia Postrel's book is great.She quotes Arthur Schlesinger qua-a-a-k-k-k-ing in his boots every time he envisions the "onrush of capitalism" via new technology.

Here's Schlesinger: "The computer turns the untrammeled market into a global juggernaut crashing across frontiers, enfeebling national powers of taxation and regulation, undercutting national management of interest rates and exchange rates, widening disparities of wealth both within and between nations, dragging down labor standards, denying nations the shaping of their own economic destiny, accountable to no one, creating a world economy without a world polity."

By which Schlessinger means THE INDIVIDUALS ARE COMING! THE INDIVIDUALS ARE COMING! BOLT THE WINDOWS! BAR THE DOORS! HIDE UNDER YOUR BEDS! EEEAAAAGGGH !